remember that wonderful monster purse that perfectlyflawed posted, and never did a tutorial?well..she's back. on a new account.. with an apology, and the official tutorial. yes, foureyedgirl is perfectlyflawed.

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i know i let a lot of crafters down when i disappeared and never posted the tutorial. i was iffy about it, and a bit selfish. i wanted my monster purse..for me. then i saw another girl, who's name escapes me at the moment, post a tutorial, and i got huffy about it and left. that was childish of me. it was also childish not to keep my word. i took down the pictures, and it was removed from the special features. i typed out a tutorial..though it may not be needed now. but most importantly, i'm asking for forgiveness from the craftster community, and i'm sorry. i don't care if it's put back into the special features..i care about you guys and crafting. so, will you forgive me?

so, that off of my shoulders now, here is the official monster bag monster tutorial. it's long. and there's no pictures of in the making..because i didn't think of it. whoops. stupid me, anyways!

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to start out with, you need the following:a yard-yard and a half of monster fur fabric. any color.a yard-yard and a half of lining fabric that matches the fur. or doesn't. up to you.half a foot of white fabric, preferably shiny.three sheets of felt - white, black, and red.two D ringsa purse strap ((or make your own.))and your basic sewing accessories; needle, LOTS of thread, scissors, etc.

it's actually rather simple, the biggest part of it would be all the details added ((eyes, teeth, etc)). and you can make this any dimension..i believe mine turned out to be 12 inches wide by 10 inches tall.

to start, cut out the main parts of your purse from the monster fur and the lining fabric. this would consist of the "front and back" of each, the two sides, and the bottom peice, like shown:do this for both the lining and the monster fur. now put this aside.

the flap is your next part, but that's easy. using the same width as your "body" fabric, but add around three inches or so to the height so you can sew it on the back, cut out two peices from the monster fur. next take the lining fabric and cut out a large oval shape, this will later form the mouth. cut that oval in half.

now to cut out the details!! taking your white shiny fabric, cut out two circles. doesn't matter if one's bigger than the other or not. also cut out four medium sized triangles, these will form your front teeth. then take your felt, and cut out two black circles that are smaller than your white ones, a tongue from the red felt, and a bunch of little triangles from the little felt. with my purse i had twenty triangles. also from the monster fur cut out two small rectangles, these will hold your strap on later. and lastly, cut out two rectangles, one big enough to hold a phone or whatever, and another about double that width.

hand tired yet from all that cutting? well, now you have to sew it together.

sewing the "body" together is pretty straightforward, and i'm sure you can do it with a sewing machine. i followed chainreaction's messenger bag tutorial for most of this. the only part that differs would be the flap, mine's all one peice. just make sure when you're sewing the fur that it's all going in the downward direction, otherwise it looks odd. and <b>don't</b> sew together the outer and inner yet..we have details to add.

for the flap, just put your fur wrongside out ((make sure the fur is going in the same direction)) and sew together along the bottom edge and the two side, do NOT sew together the top yet.

okay, body: check. flap: check. details: next!

take one of your semi-circles and center it on the top edge of your monster fur "body". sew it on using a thread similar in color. now take your tongue and center it on the top, but this time bring it down about a centimeter or so. sew that on. using black thread, sew a straight line starting from the top of the tongue going about 3/4th's of the way down. sew up and down in that line until the line is as solid as you like. going around the edge of the "mouth", starting where the top of the tongue is, sew about half of your felt teeth on. it works nicely if you have an even number of teeth. also at this point grab your two tiny rectangles and your D rings.fold the rectangles in half through the D rings, and sew them on the inside sides of your bag, this will hold the strap on.

lay your flap on a flat surface, open side right in front of you. take your body with part of your "mouth" sewn on, and lay it towards bottom edge of the flap. this is trial and error to find where the top of your mouth is going to go. basically you're putting the flap over the body to find how far down you have to go before it covers the "mouth". using your finger or a pin mark the flap where it just starts to come over the "body", and thats where the edge of your other semi-circle will be. sew that on. also sew on the other half of the felt teeth like you did before. congrats, you made the mouth.

now take your lining and turn it rightside in, the way it will sit in the purse. figure out which side will be the back. take the two rectangles you cut out for the pockets, and sew them on about the middle of the "back side". to create two pockets from the large rectangle, sew a line down the middle of the rectangle. i made the mistake of putting my pockets in the front..whoops!

go back to your flap now, it's time to give your monster eyes. this i found was the hardest part. this next part is hard to explain, but basically you're going to want to make a hem around the whole white part of the eyes. it helps to have those throw-away plastic cups, two of them to be precise.. cut the cup part away, leaving the plastic rim, and cut through it, then re-attach the cut sides when you're happy with the size of the circle. one eye on mine is larger than the other. now here's the tricky part: place your white circles over your plastic circles and, like those embroidery rings, fold the extra white under and sew it to itself. still following me? good. sew on the black circles. now, take your eyes and sew them onto your flap, little lower than the middle. walah, eyes. sew the rest of your flap closed.

now sew your flap to the back of your purse, making sure it covers the "mouth". i just attached an adjustable strap from another purse onto the D rings, but you can certainly make your own.

Wow. Even though we're all not face-to-face, let me be the first to say apologies are hard anywhere. Congratulations! I'd like to think in similar circumstances, I'd have the guts to do what you have done.

Wow. Even though we're all not face-to-face, let me be the first to say apologies are hard anywhere. Congratulations! I'd like to think in similar circumstances, I'd have the guts to do what you have done.

thank you..i actually amazed myself doing this..but i realized it needed to be done, otherwise i'd just be a total chicken and a lying loser. and i didn't want to be that.

yes i agree, its hard to apologize and realize mistakes! but i'm glad you did and i think we're all glad to have you back! thanks for the tutorial! i'm still trying to decide what color fur would suit my monster bag best! you guys all have said you found it at walmart! anywhere else b/c i haven't seen them?

Thanks so much for doing this. I had this on my summer list of "to-do's" and was so sad it was gone! an with a tutorial besides...I would have just been happy with the main pictures (but don't take down the tutorial! LOL)

~My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.~

Hey foureyesgirl, I think that's very sweet that you decided to share the technique after all! It's very generous of you. I know that it's a slippery slope sometimes when you post something original and then so many others want to make it. Sometimes you might change your mind about how you feel about this and that's totally legit. Especially if it's really original and you later decide you want to sell it at craft fairs or something.

And also I'm sure 99% of Craftsters totally feel this way already but it can't hurt to reiterate that it's totally uncool to take someone else's original idea and make money from it. Not only is it wrong, but the indie crafting world is a small world and it's bound to get back to the originator of the project and/or get you publicly outed.

So if you want to copy a project that someone has posted here on Craftster for personal use, that's fine. If you want to copy a project or an original drawing or whatever TO SELL, that's not OK.

The latter part of this post is only tangentially related to the monster purse but I just like to reiterate this whenever I can so sorry for the partial hijacking of this thread.